


How to Fill the Emptiness You Left Behind

by Kazaha_87



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, First Kiss, Heartshipping, M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-01-30 21:36:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12661884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kazaha_87/pseuds/Kazaha_87
Summary: “Do you miss him?”, Yugi probed with his host without thinking.He didn’t even notice that he had asked it out loud and, when he finally realized, he just flushed with both mortification and guilt for posing the ‘forbidden question’.And he knew it oh-so well!He should have known it, but it just slipped his tongue… he just couldn’t help himself.…but anyway it wasn’t right for him to ask…“I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have…”, he tried to fix his slip, the guilty feelings taking over. “I myself hate it when people ask me… I know it’s too private a question. Seriously, sorry. Just forget it.”Noticing how flustered Yugi had become all of a sudden, Ryou almost imperceptibly snorted and then gently smiled back at him as if it was nothing. But both of them knew that it was far from being it.Then Ryou heaved a long, heavy sigh, but decided to satiate the other’s curiosity anyway.“I don’t know”, he admitted in a serious tone, his smile vanished for barely a second before settling itself again on his face. Like putting on and off a mask. He had made it so swiftly! “But I fear so”, and when he spoke those last words it sounded a bit as if he was self-deprecatingly laughing at himself.





	1. The Mask

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Come colmare il vuoto che hai lasciato](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6414559) by [Kazaha_87](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kazaha_87/pseuds/Kazaha_87). 



> Well hello!  
> That's an old Yu-gi-oh! fanfic I wrote now almost two years ago. That's a strange pairing and, actually, when I started this story I didn't plan to write a Heartshipping at all. It actually never crossed my mind to write such a paring until it happened! XD  
> But I really love it how it came out. Probably I shouldn't be the one to say it since I'm the one who wrote it, but I'm really proud of myself for this one! XD  
> That was originally in italian, but since I like it so much still now, I just decided, since it's not too long, to translate it into english, hoping that someone would happen here and read it and, possibly, enjoy it too.  
> Sooooo, I hope you'll like it, and if anyone should decide to leave a comment I would really appreciate it!  
> I'm sorry in advance for any mistakes in english: I try my best, but I have no one to correct my grammar and so sometimes I'm sure that some verbs especially might come out in the wrong form... to all the grammar-nazi like me out there, then, I'm sorry! XD

It was five in the afternoon and Yugi, in the first half hour of calm since they had opened in the morning, was sitting on his chair, huddled up behind the counter of the Kame Game Shop. He was lost in thought, his gaze blank and fixed on the entrance, his chin leaning on his fists and his elbows on the wooden surface. His grandpa, just a little further, was sorting the new Duel Monsters cards arrived that morning and that had waited in a box until then before one of them was able to find a moment to put them in the display book on the counter.

“Hey Yugi. You seem a bit absentminded today” Sugoroku commented and the young man hastily snapped out of it.

“Do you think so?”, Yugi asked back and, with a large smile on his face, he just jumped off his chair. “I’m just a bit tired, you know”, he justified himself while stretching a bit in order to give credit to his own words. “It’s so busy during summer holidays! But tell me, grandpa: would you like some tea?”, he quickly changed topic. “I was just wondering about going and make some for myself too.”, he suggested, and the old man only smiled and nodded at his nephew; but when Yugi turned his back at him and disappeared behind the backdoor, anyway, Sugoroku heaved a long, deep sigh.

-&-

The moment Yugi closed the door at his back, once finally alone, he stopped in the middle of the hallway, shut his eyes and soundly sighed. His shoulders, straight since he had started off his chair in order to keep up appearances, were now curved under a burden he was really _tired_ of carrying; but, since he didn’t want to worry anybody, he just had to. Because he hated the mere idea of making people worry about him.

First of all, his grandfather.

And that burden was the burden of lying, because, even if it was a white lie, it was still a lie.

Truth was, in fact, that he _wasn’t_ fine. He wasn’t fine at all. On the contrary. And ironically, the most time went on, day after day, the most grinning and bearing it hurt.

And the mere thought that in three days it was already a year – a whole year since he had bid farewell to his other self, to his other half… to Atem – didn’t help his mood in the slightest.

But despite that, even if it hurt to fake a smile in front of his friends, his family, or even in front of strangers, doing that wasn’t really that difficult anyway, and after a year he had grown accustomed to lie and he had become good at concealing his feelings behind a mask, good at faking that everything was ok, that he was able to enjoy life as much as before when he wasn’t alone… he had become really good at hiding the nostalgia and that emptiness that he felt inside him!

After a long moment lost in his sadness in the black hallway, he heavily sighed again and, opening his eyes back, he snapped out of his disheartening thoughts and finally headed to the kitchen to make tea.


	2. In Memory of the Pharaoh

That’s true: it could be – fairly – easy to feign that he was feeling ok and that he wasn’t thinking about his other self as often as he breathed, but once they would have gathered all together he was sure that it wouldn’t have been so easy anymore…

 

It was Jounouchi-kun who organized everything.

It would have been his job, he knew it— he knew that everybody expected him to be the one to do it – but with profuse smiles and on the pretext of his work at the shop, he had been able to delegate.

But, sooner or later, all the chickens come home to roost, and now the forlorn hope was to be able to make it through the day with all the others without them noticing that he had lied to them for all that time.

 

The meeting was at ten in front of the school, like in the old days, and the plan for later was to move to the park for a picnic all together.

Yugi had left the house late, and then he had walked very slowly to the meeting point.

His cellphone had rung repeatedly with new messages from Jounouchi and Anzu who, at 10:20, were righteously asking where in the world he was, since it wasn’t like him to be late.

“ _Sorry guys…I’m comin’! My mom insisted that I tidied up my room before leaving… 5 mins and I’ll be there!_ ”

Send.

Done…

Now he only had to find the courage to come out from behind the corner and to go meet them: it was ten minutes that he was hiding there, dithering, after all.

…well, even if it was of little comfort: at least he still had five minutes before having to really reach them there!

Five minutes that passed far too quickly…

Yugi ran for the last 50 meters in order to make his previous pretext sound believable.

A friendly “At last! We’d almost given up on you, man!” from Jounouchi-kun greeted him together with a pat on the back and a smile full of sympathy. “Your mom sure can be a hassle even when you’re late!”

“Yeah…”, Yugi slightly flushed. It was for the white lie he had told them five minutes before, but, luckily for him, everybody read it as shame. After all, a mother who insists for you to tidy up your room before going out at eighteen years old could be definitely embarrassing…

Anyway, sure it felt strange to him how a tiny lie like that one had been able to make him turn red in shame more than the massive one that he had been carrying on for a whole year now. He stopped to ponder about that matter for a few minutes, lost in thought for the umpteenth time already while the others had gone back to their previous conversations among each other while cheerfully heading to the park together. In the end, he just reached the conclusion that it was because, where the big lie had been brought on for other people’s sake, he had come out with that small one – and no matter how innocent and insignificant it actually was, it was still a lie – for totally egoistical reasons.

It took him a couple of minutes, but at last he forced himself to cheer up in order to let the show go on no matter how or what. Because he couldn’t afford to be discovered.

He didn’t want their pity, after all.

He just didn’t need it.

But – pretty much unsurprisingly, he had to say – despite his determination not to appear pathetic in his friends’ eyes, Anzu gave the impression to be there just for that purpose, with her gaze fixed on the ground and that meek air around her, seemingly unable to approach him or even to watch at him in the face.

For as much as he could, he decided to just ignore her.

He continued to look around, studying his friends, and just as much unsurprisingly he didn’t find Kaiba-kun among them, especially since Jounouchi-kun was the one who had organized their gathering together.

But, truth be told, he didn’t expect him to come anyway, even if someone had decided to invite him.

However, even if probably he shouldn’t be that stunned about it, he really did not expect to see _Bakura_ among them. It wasn’t as if he didn’t consider him a friend, but the introverted albino had never really integrated in their group and he had rarely gathered with them in his free time even after all that story with the Millennium Items had reached an end. And so much so that, in the last few months, perhaps he had met him once.

Ryou was now walking between Honda and Jounouchi with that innocent smile fixed on his face and his sad, doe eyes lost in his secret world, listening to some crappy story that the both of them seemed all eager to share with him.

"Hey, Yugi..." Anzu started after several minutes walking quietly side by side with him, attempting to lighten up that same atmosphere that she had contributed to make heavy. "How are you?"

The same moment when she threw at him the very last question he would have ever wanted to hear, Bakura-kun, who was walking a few steps ahead of him with the other two, abruptly turned backwards and their gazes met.

It was barely a second, nothing more than that, but it had been enough to throw him off balance and make him miss, in a sense, the right time to answer to the girl’s unwelcome question.

"You know... I miss him a lot..." Anzu continued at that point, interpreting his silence as a way to conceal his pain.

" _Yes_ ," Yugi replied coldly, cutting her words short, without even turning to look at her and just continuing to walk, considerably raising his pace. By the way, perhaps that "yes" had come out a bit too sharply for the always kind and submissive him, but for that reason, at least, Anzu looked at him in the eye for the first time since he had arrived.

"Hey!" Jounouchi readily stepped in, deciding to intervene before anything bad could happen and totally spoil the mood of that day together, "What did you bring to eat for later?" he changed topic. "I'm already starving!"

Yugi calmed down almost immediately, not wanting them to realize how great his frustration that he had been struggling to hide for a year now was. So he forced a smile on his face again and let out a soft laugh while he slapped the taller friend on the back.

"As always you think with your stomach first, Jounouchi-kun! It's nice to see that some things remained the same over time!"

"Did you have any doubts about it?" Honda replied, turning back towards them too and laughing as he tried, in vain, to keep up an adult air. "I must say that, perhaps, Kaiba wasn’t really wrong when he called him dog."

Everybody laughed – even Anzu. Everyone except for Jounouchi – obviously – who began instead to loudly complain and to throw uncalled-for insults at Kaiba.

Everything sounded normal. And maybe, for them, it was…

And so they spent a couple of hours talking about nothing, until, after lunch, Anzu started to pressure them to talk about Atem, and the time they spent together in their adventures around the world.

"Because that’s why we are here, aren’t we?" she had exclaimed at a certain point in a reproachful tone. As if they were stupid, or insensitive, when _she_ was the only one there being insensitive at all.

Because they were boys: they just didn’t talk about these kind of things! They just thought about them. All together.

Yugi knew that Anzu didn’t do that on purpose or with some evil intent, but that in itself didn’t mean that he could just sit there and listen to her crap, feeling like the “poor little Yugi” every fucking time that she was around! Because he might want for everybody to be happy and for him not to be a burden to his family and his dearest friends, but that didn’t mean that he just had to stop to be fed up to be pointed as the pitiable Yugi all the time!

And again, at Anzu’s really tactless remark, Yugi crossed his eyes with Ryou; and again he missed the right time for answering.

Luckily, this time, the question wasn’t addressed to him only, and so Jounouchi-kun could fill the silence that had fallen as a heavy cape upon them. But unluckily enough, at least for him, he just agreed with her, even if he was sure that he did that only in order to make her shut up. But that also meant that, for the next three hours or so, he just had to embark in a heated conversation that he really had no heart to listen to, not to mention to actively participate while attempting not to make his smile falter from his face.

 

Finally, it had been arduous and he really had no idea how he could have made it till the end, but somehow he had managed to keep up appearances and, at five o'clock in the afternoon, between smiles and laughter and a lot of pats on the shoulder, everybody took their leave.

At last.

And when everybody finally turned their back at him, his fake grin fell and a heavy sigh escaped his throat.

He was about to leave too when someone firmly grasped his wrist, stopping him.

Flabbergasted, he turned backwards, deeply startled not to be alone.

For some reason, in fact, he didn’t notice that someone else had stayed behind with him: all day long he had paid so much effort to make it so that Anzu, Jounouchi and Honda did not realize of his distress that, somehow, he had forgotten that Ryou had been with them all the time too...

The silent Ryou...

Sometimes it felt a bit like he was a wallflower...

"Bakura-kun!" Yugi exclaimed totally caught off-guard and feeling guilty about the last not-very-nice thought that had crossed his mind. After all, Ryou didn’t deserve it.

The albino finally let go and silently looked him in the eye, perhaps perceiving that last shameful thought in the redness that had slightly colored his cheeks.

Or not? That, Yugi could not know... But, for a single, brief second, the gentle gaze and the ever-present kind smile on Bakura’s face disappeared, only to appear again the next moment, as if those few instants of défaillance had never happened in the first place.

"You can call me by name like you do with the others, if you want."

In front of such a suggestion just coming out of the blue, for some not-better-clear reason Yugi blushed to the tip of his ears, and Ryou – since embarrassment is contagious – blushed right back, confused, and, in order to hide his discomfort, he just gave him his back for a few eternal seconds.

Then he turned back towards him again, but this time their eyes didn’t meet.

"Would you like to keep me company?" Ryou abruptly asked a bit formally – but it had always been his way of talking, actually… – despite still not being able to watch at him in the eye, and Yugi, astonished for the umpteenth time that day because of him, studied Ryou in silence for a long moment. Then, at last, he just smiled at him and nodded and, still not knowing how or why he did it, he just took his hand in his and squeezed it for just a second before letting it go again.

And he didn’t know the reason why he had felt the need to do so as much as he did not know why this last smile had been his first sincere smile after so long, and yet...


	3. Need To Fill That Emptiness

They walked in silence for more than an hour without a care of where they were going, but that silence wasn’t overwhelming.

Quite the contrary.

When they finally stopped, somehow, Yugi found that they were in front of Ryou's doorstep.

"Would you fancy some tea?" Bakura invited him to enter, and, before stopping to think, Yugi was already smiling and nodding.

He didn’t know what was going on with himself, but he wasn’t sure if it was the case – or the time – to wonder about it. So he just lived the moment.

"Thank you," Yugi replied as he crossed the threshold and took off his shoes.

Ryou did not answer.

"Your house is always tidy," Yugi commented as he sat on a chair in the kitchen while Ryou fiddled with teapot, mugs and a pot of water on the fire.

"I don’t have many pastimes other than making dioramas, and I don’t make one since then."

There was no need to specify what he meant by that ‘then’: Yugi knew it all too well.

“Do you miss him?”, Yugi probed with his host before thinking at what he was saying again.

He didn’t even notice that he had asked it out loud and, when he finally realized, he just flushed with both mortification and guilt for posing the ‘forbidden question’.

And he knew it oh-so well!

He should have known it, but it just slipped his tongue… he just couldn’t help himself now that he was there with the only person in the world, maybe, who could understand how he felt.

…but anyway it wasn’t right for him to ask…

“I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have…”, he tried to fix his slip, the guilty feelings taking over. “I myself hate it when people ask me… I know it’s too private a question. Seriously, sorry. Just forget it.”

Noticing how flustered Yugi had become all of a sudden, Ryou almost imperceptibly snorted and then gently smiled back at him as if it was nothing. But both of them knew that it was far from being it.

Then Ryou heaved a long, heavy sigh, but decided to satiate the other’s curiosity anyway.

“I don’t know”, he admitted in a serious tone, his smile vanished for barely a second before settling itself again on his face. As if Ryou was putting on and off a mask; and he had made it incredibly swiftly! “But I fear so”, he concluded, and, when he spoke those last words, it sounded a bit as if he was self-deprecatingly laughing at himself.

"He wasn’t very kind to you, was he?"

Another snort, followed suite by another kind smile, and that was when Yugi started to recognize that smile for what it really was. What shocked him the most, by the way, was the realization that he hadn’t noticed _at all_ what Bakura-kun was hiding behind his gentle, kind and so very sad smile until that very moment. And, really, it was just beyond him how he had been so blind and stupid until then.

"No, he wasn’t." Bakura flatly replied, with no trace of emotion in his voice, as if it wasn’t even concerning him.

Yet, that 'no' clearly hid a ‘but’.

Yugi felt it.

He knew.

His instinct wasn’t as good as Jounouchi's, perhaps, but he trusted it.

And that’s why he didn’t stop there, but he just continued to probe instead of dropping it: he knew that it wasn’t right, but again he couldn’t refrain from digging further. From digging deeper.

"However, in his own way, he cared about you," Yugi went on, and at that totally out-of-the-blue comment, for a blink of an eye the expression on Ryou's face changed radically, showing exactly, even if only for the briefest moment, what lay behind that mask to which Bakura had had so much more time than him to adapt to.

Yugi noticed Ryou divert his gaze, his head slightly leaned to his left and those amber eyes staring at a random spot on the tiled kitchen floor.

"Yes," he replied at last, and although his gaze still didn’t meet Yugi's, his voice, no matter how feeble, didn’t waver.

Then, finally, the albino heavily sighed and Yugi saw the other’s eyes turn watery and he watched him fight to hold back tears and win while distracting himself sipping his tea, a new silence filling the space between them. A silence no more as comfortable as it had been earlier.

On the other hand, now Yugi dithered slightly while staring at the colored liquid inside his mug and at the leaves crumbled too thinly to remain in the filter and that now were freely floating in his tea. Then he imitated his host and emptied his mug in a single long gulp too.

"Forgive us," Yugi suddenly murmured, wracked with guilt, but that prayer, and in plural form no less, bought him Ryou’s full attention.

To that, the albino, in fact, just slightly frowned and studied him in silence, waiting for a clarification of that unexpected phrasing. Because, in his opinion, if someone had to apologize to Yugi, the Pharaoh, and to all their other friends, that person was him and no one else...

"No one is completely bad or cruel”, Yugi went on at last, “and yet we have always acted taking into account only that side of the Spirit of the Ring, and, in short, we have literally forced you to get rid of the Millennium Ring and to get rid of him. And more than once, actually, rather than helping the both of you… all that in the assumption of being in the right. And every time without thinking about your feelings on the matter..."

Ryou bit his lower lip and gulped. He would have never expected that. Then, he sighed for the umpteenth time, perhaps looking for the right words to say to that, perhaps only buying himself some time.

"You didn’t have a choice. And I didn’t either", he replied at last. "To seek revenge is like a poison: it corrupts the soul, and the Spirit of the Ring only knew suffering, loneliness and hatred in life... He found the wrong answers, and he passed too much time in that dark prison that was the Ring with Zorc, who only corrupted him further. He self-convinced that there was no other way. Seeking revenge, in short, had been what had given him the strength to survive for three whole millennia in that dark and lonely prison. In the end, he was only very much alone, and life had been too hard on him from the very start. Because not everybody is born lucky.”

Yugi glanced away again in shame and the silence filled the space between them once more.

"I'm sorry…"

Ryou shrugged and offered him a wry smile.

"He brought this on himself. And yet..."

Ryou sighed, leaving the phrase hanging, but still: it was more than he had done so far. It was the first admission after that "yes" earlier of the bond that he had shared with the Spirit of the Ring. The first real crack in that thick wall that he had built around himself along the years in order to keep people out. In order not to feel judged.

In order to survive.

Then, suddenly, the young albino rose to his feet and, his empty mug laying in a hand for a long time now, he gave Yugi his back and went to fill it again with the remaining tea still inside the pot on the cooker.

"Would you like some more?" Bakura offered while filling his own mug and without looking at him.

Yugi didn’t answer, and he just took it as a no. Then, Ryou was about to go back to his seat that the noise of a chair sliding backwards caught his attention.

He turned his head just in time to see Yugi's multicolored, spiky hair only a few inches from his nose, the other’s face hiding between his shoulder blades and snuggling into his loose, candid tresses, his arms shockingly wrapped around his waist in a firm, needy grip that made him shiver for some reason.

Ryou put down the mug just in time not to spill it everywhere.

"What--?!" he protested, totally flabbergasted, but Yugi's desperate tone stopped him mid-sentenced.

"How can you endure it? This emptiness. I feel like they've ripped me of half of my soul! How do you do it? How do you manage to continue to pretend to be okay?! I can’t take it anymore. And it's only been a year!"

Yugi started to sob without control, even if he hadn’t shed a tear in months.

The last time, he was alone in his room. In order not to worry anybody.

And, curiously, after years that it didn’t happen anymore, silent tears streaked Ryou's face. And, for the first time ever, he wept for _his_ _own_ loss.

 

The minutes passed without them noticing while, for the first time, they let off steam with somebody beside them.

When, finally, Yugi stopped sobbing and his brain got back to work, ashamed he blushed violently and, his hands well in view and his gaze roaming around the room, he broke away from Bakura.

_What in the seven hells had gotten into him?!_

He did not understand…

"I'm sorry... I don’t know what--" he started giggling uncomfortably while trying to apologize, but, shockingly as much as unexpectedly, that same moment, Ryou turned and, desperate as Yugi had never seen him before, he snatched his face in between his hands and cried a frantic "no". Then, before he could even grasp what was happening, he saw Ryou bent over him and, closing his eyes shut, join their lips together with an urgency that Yugi would have never expected coming from him.

Flabbergasted and restless, his eyes wide open for all that long, breathtaking moment, Yugi felt Bakura relax instead into that desperate kiss and the grip on his face loosening and gradually turning more gentle the more he calmed down.

On the other hand, his heart didn’t seem intentioned to stop racing in his chest… because, after all, it had been his first kiss…

But when Ryou, at last, came back to his senses and opened his eyes again, maybe meeting Yugi’s disconcertment at less than a palm from his nose, he started to panic. Unable to retreat because of the kitchen counter trapping him there, Yugi’s body still against his, Ryou instinctively pushed the boy away, hands high and palms showing as if he had been a criminal caught red-handed and still with the weapon with him, his previous calm totally vanished in the time of a blink.

For some reason, that image brought Yugi back to the past, and he slightly shivered despite himself when he realized that Ryou had _really_ blood on his hands because of the Spirit of the Ring...

And yet, thinking back at it, his hands were just as dirty…

Well… maybe not just as dirty as his, but still… after all, when Atem was still the Spirit of the Puzzle, with no name and no past, he had decided to take justice into his own hands, without thinking that those hands weren’t exactly his own.

"I'm sorry...I... I didn’t--," he stammered out, but Yugi interrupted him the same way that Ryou had interrupted him a moment earlier, but, disconcerted about the turn that that situation was taking, Bakura, unlike Yugi, reflexively pushed him away again.

Yugi knew that he had turned red in the face – he was feeling it in his cheeks, which seemed to be on fire – but he didn’t turn his gaze away from Ryou's, not even for a second, and, instead, he grasped a hand in his and squeezed it tight without a word. He had wanted to reassure him with that gesture, but, somehow, he didn’t achieve the hoped-for effect. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"I...today has taken a weird turn..." Bakura stammered with no idea of where to look. "I think you should go home now......by the way, thanks for your time ---"

"Don’t send me away", Yugi whispered, but that prayer was steeped with a strange determination that made Ryou’s gaze abruptly stop wandering and fix right back in his guest’s eyes.

Yugi, in response to that, only tightened his grip on his hand and noticed the other swallow hard. Then, without letting go, he brought Ryou’s palm to his chest and, taking another step towards him, he sank his face in the hollow of the other’s pale neck and in the white mane flowing over his shoulders.

"Yugi..." Ryou started, wavering, but a soft "sh" cut him short.

"Let me stay like that for a little longer," Yugi begged in no more than a whisper, gazing up at him with his big, purple eyes as if to plead with him to grant his wish, even though he knew that it was selfish of him to ask for that. "I think I found how to fill that emptiness..."


End file.
